Worth It? A Survival Test for an Adventure Camera

With the rise in things like GPS technology and the ability to squeeze more functions into a smaller space, gadgets to accomodate budding adventurers have been evolving quickly.

For the past two years I have tested underwater cameras made by Cannon, Olympus and Fuji. But this year I needed something more – a camera that worked with GPS, or global positioning satellites, to log my first trip to South America. I’m an avid photographer, but one of the most laborious and sometimes annoying aspects for me is the process of labeling and organizing photos after a vacation has ended.

So I was excited when Pentax, a proven waterproof adventure camera maker, launched its first satellite-connected camera this year, the Optio WG-1 GPS camera. It costs about $400, though I found it for about $350 online.

The Optio GPS camera packs a lot of punch in its tiny body, 4.5 inches wide and 1.1 inches thick, weighing 5.9 ounces with its battery. It’s waterproof up to 33 feet, shockproof up to five feet, and weatherproof in temperatures ranging from 14 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It has 14 megapixels, a 5x wide angle optical zoom lens embedded in the camera’s body.

While I was on a boat trip around the Galapagos Islands that involved daily snorkeling and hiking excursions, the camera proved versatile, capturing flying birds using its 5x wide angle optical zoom lens or taking close-up shots of insects and flowers using the enhanced digital microscope mode, which turns on 5 LED lights circling the embedded lens to provide even lighting.

Its 2.7-inch widescreen LCD screen with anti-reflective coating worked well in different lighting conditions. Still, a viewfinder would have been helpful. One afternoon when the sun was particularly fierce, I had trouble shooting videos of Sally Lightfoot crabs crawling across lava formations. This was because I had trouble even seeing the handy color balance and exposure settings for brief periods.

The GPS was helpful in organizing my photos, and using the online photo-sharing site Picasa, I was able to share the exact location on a map, so my friends could see. While the camera and GPS logging were on, the system collected coordinates at intervals of as little as 15 seconds and as much as one minute. If the camera is off and logging is off, it will update GPS positions at 15-minute intervals.

The logging appeared to be extremely accurate, showing Ecuador’s Mitad del Mundo monument – which is supposed to represent the equator but is famously slightly off — at latitude 0°00′07″S.

But alas, the Option WG-1 GPS camera wasn’t foolproof. About halfway through my trip, I put a fresh memoy card into the camera, firmly snapped the latch closed and handed off to a shipmate who was going snorkling. A few minutes later the camera was returned to me after it failed to turn on. Water had somehow gotten in.

Upon closer inspection, it appeared that the latch covering the battery and memory card compartment was able to move slightly back and forth even when it was locked. I was only the second one to report a flooding problem out of more than a thousand units that had been sold, said John Carlson, senior manager of sales and marketing for Pentax Imaging Co. Under such circumstances warranty would cover repairs and fixes, he said. Because the latch had worked fine earlier in my trip, it is unclear whether the problem was a result of a flaw in the camera or caused by something I had done.

So is the Pentax Optio GPS adventure camera worth it? Clearly I am a bit hesitant because of my debacle. But before its demise, this Optio camera was one of the most versatile cameras I had ever tested. Pentax has a solid track record of producing adventure proof cameras over the past several years and fixing problems. In this case,I would feel more comfortable with a better warning system in place to alert the user that water is entering the compartment.﻿